Three
by starfish.dancer
Summary: In which Jemma is not a third wheel after all. Written for WardSimmonsSummer 2016 session five, prompted by OT3/Polyamory. Civilian AU.
1. Three (Is A Charm)

_**Three (Is A Charm)**_

 _After a bad breakup with the best friend and work partner she never should have dated to begin with, biochemist Jemma Simmons needs a change of scenery. When a former classmate goes on sabbatical and suggests Jemma get back on her emotional feet by stepping into Bobbi's job and home for a year, Jemma jumps at the chance. She's a little lonely, but the couple next door seems to have made it their mission to check in on her and draw her out of her shell. If only she didn't find the both of them so incredibly attractive…_

Jemma smiles tightly and duck her head, bringing the champagne flute to her lips and pretending to sip to cover a pang of loneliness that hits her, even amongst the crowd counting down the new year that surrounds her. God, she never should have let Grant and Daisy convince her to come out with them. It had been fun for a while, but now she's standing amongst couples who are buzzed and giddy, ready to kiss to the turn of the year, and she's alone, her longest friendship in ruins behind her because, for all the genius she's said to be, she was stupid enough to think that because Fitz was in love with her, she'd be able to love him back.

"Six! Five! Four!"

Jemma's puts the glass back to her lips to hide their trembling, trying to push the self-loathing aside, to leave it in the old year. She doesn't want to mar Grant and Daisy's evening, either. She pastes on a smile and downs her champagne, grabs another off a nearby tray. She'll toast with her friends once they've done kissing, she tells herself, then beg off back to the building to go to bed.

"Three! Two! One!"

The ball drops, fireworks erupt in the sky, and Grant pulls Daisy in for a kiss, his hand dipping low on her bare back, their champagne flutes on a table beside them so as not to get in the way. Jemma can't help but watch, the beauty of them pressed together. Daisy in her bold pink dress, hands cupping Grant's face. The way he leans into her, one hand tangled in her dark hair as his mouth moves over hers.

With a herculean effort, Jemma manages to tear her gaze from them before they break the kiss, her cheeks colour a little from the visual.

"Jemma!" Daisy reaches to grab her arm and she lets herself be pulled in, then more quickly than she's able to track finds her drink plucked from her hand as she's shoved bodily into Grant.

"Jemma needs a New Year's kiss, too," Daisy announces. Any protest she might have made (and who is she really fooling) dies on her lips as Grant's cover her own. It's not the perfunctory peck she might have expected, given his girlfriend is standing a foot away. It's not tentative, either; his hands on her waist pull her flush against him, his mouth demanding. Her hands find his biceps as she opens her mouth for him, yields to the desire that has been burgeoning in her for

months. He kisses the very breath from her lungs, and it takes only a short second before guilt and shame wash over her. She's kissed her friend's boyfriend – her friend! – like he was a lover, like she had any right to do so. She doesn't have time to dwell on it, though, because Daisy is spinning her around, only there isn't anger in her dark eyes. Instead, there is only amusement and something else Jemma can't quite name.

"Daisy," she begins, unsure of what she's about to say. There's a question in it, she thinks, but she can't quite make sense of herself through the heady feeling coursing through her.

"My turn," Daisy says, stepping into Jemma's space. Then she's being kissed again, this one different but no less intoxicating an experience as Daisy playfully nips at her lips, a careful tease of mouth and hands that leave her spinning. Her eyes flutter closed and she feels Grant step in behind her. His hand slides down her silk dress, hot through the thin material until it is rubbing circles over her hip bone. She feels his stubble against her neck then he's sucking a mark into her skin. Her hand comes to cover his own as she arches into it, a low whine escaping her throat of its own volition.

Daisy moves against Jemma, one hand anchored in Grant's hair, the other fluttering in feather-light touches along her collar bone. It's then she realises that her other hand is not free, that sometime along the line she'd flattened her palm where Grant's had been, just above the cut of Daisy's dress, smoothing along the soft, bare skin.

"What… I don't…" she starts feebly, breaking off when Daisy leans to lick the swell of her breast.

"We're seducing you," Daisy says, a flirtatious note beneath the matter-of-fact statement.

"Is it working?" Grant asks from behind her, not giving her a change to respond properly when he finds that spot near the hinge of her jaw and bites. She makes a noise so wanton she'd be embarrassed if she had enough wits left about her to care.

"We've talked about this," Grant continues, almost conversationally. "What it would be like to have you in our bed, to share you. About the things we want to do with you. To do _to_ you."

His voice is a low murmur but she feels it everywhere, like a spell burning under her skin. She feels pliant beneath their hands, drunk on champagne and their ministrations.

"Will you let us?" Daisy nearly purrs before catching Jemma's earlobe in her teeth.

"Hmm?" Jemma responds, not able to make heads or tail of the question through the haze of desire settled over them.

"Will you let us have you?" Daisy asks. "Will you let us share you?"

"It's important that we have the words, baby," Grant says, his hand sliding down to pull the hem of her skirt higher, his hand on her bare thigh. "We'll stop if you want to stop. But if you want this, want us like we want you… say yes."

It could destroy everything, she knows this too intimately, could leave nothing but ash and debris in the wake of this fire burning inside her. None of that matters at the moment, though. It feels far, far away. Because she does want this. Maybe more than anything she's ever wanted in her life. And she can't bring herself to deny this.

"Yes," she breathes out, eyes closed to the pure joy and triumph that passes over her companions faces. "Just… yes."


	2. Two (Is Not The Same)

Daisy can't pinpoint where it started, looking back. It crept up on the both of them so gradually, she thinks, that it is hard to tell beginnings from fully-blossomed desires, feelings crept under skin like the ink that curves down her forearm.

The prelude, though, might be when her neighbour Bobbi asks her and Grant to look out for the woman about to sublet the apartment next to them for a year. "She's just coming out of a really hard breakup," Bobbi had said. "Personally and professionally. She's quite possibly the sweetest person alive, so if you two wouldn't mind, I don't know, just checking in on her now and again?"

Bobbi hadn't been far off, either – the adorable, tiny Brit who's stepped into Bobbi's home and job is, as far as Daisy can tell, the nicest human on the whole of the planet, even inviting Daisy for tea when she got a care package from her mum, complete with scones, clotted cream and jam she'd whipped up over the weekend to go with it. She's smart and funny and adorably bold and shy at the same time. Jemma's even a little smaller than Daisy herself, which is novel in its own way, all doe-eyed and soft, and it catches Daisy by surprise when she realises that her fond feelings for her new neighbour are more than that.

It's not just attraction. God, Daisy had determined that from the first time Jemma had introduced herself at the mailbox. But attraction waxes and wanes and she's happy in a committed relationship with Grant. This, though? This is more than simple affection for a friend.

She doesn't dwell on it really. She's with Grant, she loves and wants him, and it isn't as though she's felt like there's a gaping hole in their relationship. It's not lacking. It's just, when she sees Grant with Jemma one day, that little half smile on his face when he looks down at Jemma, gesturing enthusiastically at something or other, Daisy realises it could be even more complete.

She buggers up the conversation, to borrow a phrase from Jemma, at first. Blurts it out randomly after dinner one day and her boyfriend takes it as the accusation it very much isn't.

"I've seen how you look at Jemma," she says.

Grant sighs, and puts down his beer. "Like what, Daisy?"

"Like you want her," Daisy fumbles. "She's your type."

"So what?" He runs a hand through his hair. "Lots of women are my type. You're my type."

"I know that," Daisy says. "I'm not… It's just…"

"I don't know what you want, here, Daisy. Because if you're trying to pick a fight, can it at least wait until the hockey game is over?"

"I don't want to fight," Daisy says. God, she wishes she were better at this kind of conversation or that there was a manual. "It's just that… I saw you, looking at her, and… You want her."

"Do I like her? Yes. Do I find her attractive? Yes. Would I make a move if I was single? Yes. But I'm not single. I love you. I don't know what you think you saw, but I'm not going to fuck her."

"What if… what if I wanted you to?"

"You … you want me to fuck another woman?"

"I want _us_ to _have_ her. I want Jemma and I want you, and I want Jemma to have us… I just… do you want to?"

It's just the start of the conversation, then. There's lots to consider, if they are going to open up this relationship. But they want to, just enough to let Jemma in. The icing on the proverbial cake. It isn't that something is missing, it's just that they realise they can have more.

They'll have to figure out the right way to broach it with Jemma, of course. "And probably you shouldn't be the one to start the conversation considering how great you did with ours," Grant says dryly when she's about to volunteer. But they suppose they can test the waters a little while they figure out their approach. Daisy already knows Jemma had dated both men and women in the past, so that's not an issue, but the last relationship she had was one that started with and ended an important friendship and left her fragile, broken, cautious. So they flirt. Subtly at first, but then a little more overtly, to gauge whether there might even be interest. And in the meantime?

In the meantime, they talk about Jemma. About what it would be like to have her in their bed. How they think she'd taste. The way her eyes would look, peering up between her legs or Grant's. What noises they could coax from her. Whose name she'd call first when she comes.

The things they want to do together, with Jemma, are downright filthy and the sex has never been hotter for the dirty talk about when they will, but it isn't enough. So when Daisy finds Jemma getting ready to spend New Year's Eve watching Doctor Who on the couch in her pyjamas, her heart thuds in her chest because she knows that, no matter when it might have begun before, it is truly starting now. So she sweet talks Jemma into a gorgeous emerald silk number that deserves to be out on a night like tonight, not hanging in the back of Jemma's closet, repeatedly reassuring her that their friends won't be upset them bringing an extra guest, and of course Grant won't mind.

No, Daisy smiles. Grant won't mind at all.


End file.
